OK, success. Grabbing a new copy of the installer, plus a reboot of my switch – plus a lot of work to figure out how to make the network share stick – and I have Roon running now on Windows Server 2016 core, without the desktop experience.
But, I have one remaining problem.
Easy to describe. Bringing up Device Manager via cmd using devmgmt.msc, there is no Sounds, Video and Game Controllers tab. Running mmsys.cpl shows that there is no sound device.
Windows Admin Center reports that the audiosrv and audioendpointbuilder services are both running, automatically.
In the desktop environment, I can load the Intel HD Graphics 4600 drivers (4th generation) and it automatically loads the Intel HD Audio driver at the same time. Not the case in core mode. Only the graphics driver loads.
I have used phputil to load the Intel HD audio driver inf and Windows reports that it is successfully installed on a device on the system. Yet, I get no sound device in Sound Manager or Device Manager and running a driver query doesn’t show any audio driver installed, notwithstanding that I’ve done so.
The motherboard is a Gigabyte unit and I’ve updated the chipset drivers and also installed the Realtek HD audio drivers that Gigabyte has on its own website. It installed, but yet, the Realtek drivers don’t show up either in the query list and still no device in Sound Manager or Device Manager.
For normal audio listening, I disable the onboard sound device on the motherboard. This isn’t an issue for the desktop experience. Thinking that might be the issue in core mode, I have enabled the onboard audio device, but it doesn’t show up in Sound Manager or Device Manager.
The only endpoint this affects is HDMI audio plugged directly into the server. Of course, that powers my multichannel Marantz prepro in my main system, so I have no multichannel audio. Bummer.
Microsoft TechNet is no help. They just say “well, your hardware and software aren’t Windows Server 2016 certified, so it’s your problem.” I am stumped. HDMI audio works fine in the desktop environment and not in core. Makes no sense. Thoughts all? Thanks. JCR